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An Endless Tug of War With Congress

May 9, 2007 6:33 pmMay 9, 2007 6:33 pm

In the dying days of the Bush presidency, it looks as though Congress and the president are engaged in one of their repeated tussles over control of foreign policy. The Constitution has always provided the potential for conflict, of course. Dividing up powers means that neither branch of government likes what they get. But it usually takes a dramatic event or a catastrophe (you can decide which of those the current occupation of Iraq is) to stir up the conflict.

After World War I, the failure of Woodrow Wilson’s grand scheme for a new, more stable world order with a fully engaged United States provoked reaction at home. Americans generally blamed the Europeans for sabotaging Wilson’s vision, but many also blamed Wilson himself for involving the United States in the war in the first place.

He had, his opponents charged, slyly and surreptitiously tilted the United States toward the Allies and away from Germany. He had passively accepted British control of the seas so that Germany, suffering under the British blockade of even neutral shipping, had been forced to resort to submarine warfare. He had then acted provocatively in arming American merchant ships against German attacks. And he had wrongly allowed American banks to lend vast sums of money and American businesses to sell resources to keep the Allied war effort afloat.
The result, according to Wilson’s American critics both at the time and since, was that the United States was dragged into a far-off war that it had no business being in. American money was wasted and American lives were needlessly lost. In the 1920s, such views contributed to both a strong commitment to peace and a mood of isolationism. By the 1930s, as the world lurched toward war again, those sentiments hardened, in many quarters, into a determination that whatever happened elsewhere, the United States would stay out.

Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts to ensure that no president would have the free hand that Wilson had over foreign policy. If a war broke out, for example, the Acts prohibited both the government and private businesses from selling weapons or war materials to any of the belligerents. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt grew increasingly concerned about the stormy international situation, he had little room to maneuver.

When war finally came, as we know, American public opinion began to shift. Roosevelt pushed the limits of the Neutrality Acts, especially with his Lend-Lease program, which made it possible for the British to “borrow” much needed military equipment. Pearl Harbor settled once and for all the question of American involvement in the war, and the isolationists faded into insignificance.

They would have undoubtedly had a resurgence after the war ended in 1945, but the onset of the Cold War brought a new willingness in the country and in Congress to see the United States take the lead in confronting the Soviet bloc. That meant supporting Harry Truman, by now president, in his foreign policy goal of containing communism. In 1947, when even the Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the arch-isolationist of the 1930s, voted in favor of Truman’s request for emergency funds to aid Greece and Turkey against communist pressures, it was clear that Congress was going to give bipartisan support to the administration’s foreign policy.

In the 1960s, however, Vietnam woke the old tensions over the control of foreign policy. The United States was increasingly mired in what seemed to be an unwinnable war and one, moreover, that lacked the legitimacy of a declaration of war by Congress. The administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, so members of Congress charged, misled them into passing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964, and then used it to wage an undeclared war against North Vietnam. Two years later, the respected chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator William Fulbright, who had voted for the resolution, publicly expressed his dismay that Congress had allowed itself to be swept along by the administration and had failed to set proper limits on the powers it had granted the president.

By the time Richard Nixon took over in 1969, many in Congress were determined to wrest back what they saw as their rightful share in the making of foreign policy, and that meant placing limits on what the president could do. When Nixon extended the Vietnam conflict into Cambodia in 1970, the Cooper-Church amendment to a foreign military aid bill attempted to end funding for American operations in both Cambodia and Laos. Nixon threatened to use his veto, but at the beginning of 1971 he was obliged to accept a milder version of the Cooper-Church amendment.

As the war dragged on and Nixon tried, initially with little success, to extricate the United States, more resolutions followed, culminating in the War Powers Act of 1973, which tried to ensure that responsibility for getting the United States into conflicts, whether there was a declaration of war or not, would in future be shared by Congress and the president.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s surreptitious attempts to funnel aid to the contras who were rebelling against a Communist government in Nicaragua brought a fresh flurry of amendments designed to strengthen Congress’ authority. American presidents since Nixon, however, have generally accepted the need to go to Congress to get authorization to use American forces and to send military aid abroad, and Congress usually has been prepared to give it.

Sept. 11, 2001, changed the balance between Congress and the president, as it changed so much else. In the shock of that dreadful event, Congress was prepared to give the president extraordinary powers. Three days later, on Sept. 14, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the president to use whatever measures necessary against the perpetrators and those who had helped them and also to prevent future terrorist attacks on the United States. President Bush and his advisers have taken full advantage of that sweeping authorization and the others that followed it, notably the 2002 Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq. Indeed, they have argued that the president, in his role as commander in chief, already had more powers than Congress had recognized.

In President Bush’s first term, Congress showed little stomach to challenge his assertion of presidential power. After all, the country was firmly behind the administration’s war on terror, from the invasion of Afghanistan to the Homeland Security Act. The deepening crisis in Iraq has inevitably brought second thoughts and reawakened long-standing Congressional anxieties over its own powers.

This past February Congress debated mildly-worded resolutions deploring the president’s decision to increase the number of American troops in Iraq. These resolutions went nowhere, but new ones kept coming. In April, in considering a bill to provide more funds for the Iraq war, the Democrats attached a series of provisos that would have held the Iraqi government to various goals and set a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. On May 1, President Bush vetoed that bill. But this is clearly not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a new round in the age-old struggle between two arms of the American government. Stay tuned.

I would hardly compare George Bush with Woodrow Wilson. Wilson came late to a war he never wanted to have to participate in at all. He practically had to be forced by events to drop neutrality and declare war on the British-French side.
A more recognizable comparison would be George Bush and Kaiser Wilhelm II. As did “Kaiser Bill”, George Bush has a father who he apparently wishes to outdo(the First Kaiser fought and Defeated the French at Sedan, causing the fall of the French emperor, Napoleon III. ) Kaiser Bill also wanted to outdo the English with their giant navy and immense empire and to prove to the world,(Germany was his world) his manhood, as does Mr. Bush. Wilhelm II was born with a crippled arm and apparently suffered a lifelong complex because of it, always attempting to hide the “deformed” arm by holding long objects in that hand or hiding it under carefully crafted clothes.
Both Wilhelm II and Bush II seem to have felt that they were God’s chosen instruments.
The greatest fear I have is that if he is forced by events in the real world to watch the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, against the “imperial” wishes of “His Decidership”, Bush like many Germans after the Great War, will scream:
” We were Stabbed in the Back ” by cowards on the home-front. That “We were winning the war against (terror, evil , Islamo-Fascism, or whatever), or had actually won it and had the cowardly Democrats and defeatists back home not forced us to leave Iraq, we would have won a permanent American peace in the entire Middle East and Israel and gone on to get all the Al Queda terrorists and to settle Iran’s hash.
Most of us know what this kind of talk by Adolf Hitler and like minded Germans did in the inter-war years in creating the conditions for the second half of the World War. It is frightening to consider the USA as a nascent Nazi Germany with George Bush II as a fill-in for both Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler.

As they say the devil is in the details. It seems to me that the struggle between the two arms of the government that we see going on now would not have occurred had the Bush administration (1) made so many mistakes in execution of the post invasion of Iraq from Bremer, to corruption and cronyism, to never securing Iraq with enough troops, not to mention Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and (2) essentially lying about and marketing the invasion vis-a-vis WMD and other intelligence claims of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. Had the Bush administration been competent in its prosecution of this war on Iraq, it is entirely possible that Congress would not be attempting to get back its rightful place in the decision regarding war and armed conflict. What’s worse is that had the Bush administration been competently successful, so to speak, in its conquest and occupation of Iraq, it’s likely that the American public would not even be paying attention to foreign policy decisions or re-considering the Republican candidates for 2008. This is what is frightening to me. That American “imperialism” – hubris, hegemony, colonialism – could so easily be acceptable to vast numbers of Americans who refuse to question a president’s decisions simply because he is our president. Are we such sheep that we cannot “see” except in hindsight?

I was pleased that the article put the issues into historical perspective, describing the conflict between isolationism and involvement. The trait
of being “on our own and better off, thank you” is certainly also very American. Unfortunatley, “Us against the rest of the world” is harldy possible in the modern (“global”) world.
Similary, the aspect of our missionary vision was also included. The struggle for goodness is much stronger in America than anywhere else in the Western World, I believe, historically. It drew so many people to the country. This very laudable characteristic in so many of us individuals (I also strive) is very much at odds with economic and political trends. We do not need to make the world safe for God and Democracy, we need to make the world safe for the people inhabiting it.

Thanks to Martin Braun for his post #1, since he definitely knows what he’s talking about. The question is, “What then shall we do?”

Misleading is Margaret MacMillan’s statement: “In President Bush’s first term, Congress showed little stomach to challenge his assertion of presidential power.” The queston is: “Was Congress at this time an independent Second Branch of Government–SEPARATE from the First Branch? It was not. It was instead a de facto extension of the First Branch, because so many Republican members of House and Senate were “loyal Bushies”–AGENTS of the “Unitary Executive”–kept in line by such mad dogs as Rep. Tom DeLay, and by such genteel Southern playmates as Sen. Frist. These agents and shills of the Unitary Executive were an ANTI-CONGRESS, which history has revealed already. And this continues, even despite the rise of Democrats to majority by the votes of the voting electorate. Moreover, some Democrats are “loyal Bushies.”

It is important even today to make this distinction among members of Congress: Who is a “loyal Bushie,” no matter which “party?” The party line is but a cover for the TRIUMPH of Bush & Co.’s WILL. Let’s not muddy the waters by referring to CONGRESS as if it consisted entirely of members loyal to their Constitutional oaths, and to the separate Second Branch they are bound to represent, but do not.

The chapter we are living now is NOT part of OUR past. it is horrifyingly closer to Germany’s past. May we learn from it.

Responding to comment number 3, I’m afraid the writer seriously confuses “involvement” with unjustified intervention based on lies, and “isolationsm” with competently protecting national interests by going after the real bad guys. Bush has more than succeeeded in the former and abysmally failed in the latter.

Martin (#1) may very well be prescient, although he like others may be forcing analogies. I too don’t like the way things are going, but it seems that the leadership in Congress has personalized the conflict so that it is the world against George W Bush, choosing to ignore the advice of military commanders like Gen. Petraeus. There is a saying, out of the frying pan and into the fire. I am waiting to hear the Democratic leadership assert a plan for the long-term stability of the region and American interests.

Mimi (#2) I can understand your premises, but IMHO, America has done okay in the ‘imperialism’ department when compared to other countries that had been top dog. But if you’re still not happy, perhaps advances in healthcare will enable you to be around in 100 years to see what China does: all of the imperialism, but lacking our collective sense of hope and optimism. There is a sense of anger at where we are, I think, that perhaps blinds us to where we go from here.

Ken (#3) I couldn’t agree more. My family was attracted to the unique American experience, as described by authors like Daniel Boorstin.

May the New York Times continue to find ways for all of us to read each other’s comments, and learn more ways to find common ground.

The struggle for goodness was/is certainly present in immigrants to this country, but I fail to see it in the population at large. We are as egocentric as the British, Japanese or French, and goodness must be defined in terms of altruistic behaviors. Our perceived largess (which many see as a measure of our goodness) is a reflection of our wealth, but pales when viewed as a percentage of this wealth.

Back to the tug of war between our President and Congress. The President cunningly took advantage of our lack of interest in politics (see percentage of voters in national elections). Our ineffective representatives have no incentive to fight for real progress as they desperately struggle to maintain the benefits (to them) of the two-party system.

Why would the average American care about the war when they don’t have to fight it and it is paid by borrowing from foreign countries?

Am I a cynic? Unfortunately, I’ve had to become one to ward off depression.

Let’s not get sidetracked by any interventionism-isolationism dilemma. In this day and age -global economy, internet, exploding third world populations yearning for some measure of economic and political stability- isolationism is simply impossible. The main issue is which of the two government branches, executive (more prone to interventions) or legislative (more willing to isolation), is going to be the top dog and have the final say. Fortunately our constitution doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind! Therein, though, lies its strength. Ours is a system of checks and balances where, depending on the present cast of role players, one may seem to have the upper hand at one time or another. Like any system run by humans it is not perfect and at times we make monumental errors. Without going to the extremes of a parliamentary system where the cast of characters can change theoretically at any time, our election schedule offers us every two years the opportunity to replace all the members of the House, some members of the Senate, and possibly even the president! As long as we safeguard those checks and don’t allow the balance to tilt too much one way or the other we have a better chance of avoiding the fate of previous empires. Just witness what an unchecked George Bush has gotten us into! Our hope is that the swing that started with the 2006 elections and hopefully will continue in the 2008 ones will reverse the trend

In comparing what happened in the 60’s to what is happening today, certain things that were left out, make this an apple-and-oranges issue.

Congress was already Democratic at the time of Nixon’s ascendancy; he had to fight the opposition from the beginning of his administration. In Bush’s case, he was inheriting six years of Republican rebuilding and a House majority — he rode that into the White House. The majority switch to the Democrats in 2006 came precisely BECAUSE of the war HE started. Without the lies and deceit, there would be no opposition in Congress. Nixon inherited a war that had cost Johnson the White House. Bush is the architect of his own party’s demise.

I think Bush as president is a disaster, but the comparison to Hitler is over the top. This is exactly the sort of exaggerated thinking that unifies conservatives. The deciding factor when Congress and the executive branch are at loggerheads is public opinion. Mimi Barron (No. 2) is right that what’s scary in this case is our fellow Americans. The real issue of whether we ought to have invaded Iraq in the first place has been swept under the rug because Americans don’t like hearing about our losses. Congress has been empowered by this visceral public reaction, not by a sudden appreciation of pacifism. Unfortunately, our form of liberal democracy is not exactly a well-oiled machine – but it’s all we have.

No. 9 has it right. When this executive and his bullying party have not governed by main force, they have done it by stealth. And the Democrats are just getting their act together at this late hour. It would be better to have a social environment where the opposition could say, like the opposing party in England did today, “There has been so much spin in that the word of government is less believed than at any other time,” said William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman. “We will be glad to see the back of him.”

Thank you for your historical perspective. It gave me a more accurate view of where we are.

My concern is the fourth branch of government – the American people. Where is our power?

I understand that the United States is a representative democracy. Our representatives (of whom the president is one) have forgotten to represent us! The president has refused to represent us. (Of course, what do you expect from a man who acquired his position through duplicity.)

Martin (#1) mentions a similarity between Wilhelm 11 and George W. Bush.They both had problems with
their masculinity & therefor used war as a means
of proving how masculine they were. Iteresting, that in January 2002, Karl Rove told the Republicans (in an election year) that theie agenda was: “War,War,War” !!!!. Rove was aware
that Bush suffered from a “wimp” image- he had
failed at virtually everything he had attempted.
The administration had no credible plans for the
country vis-a-vis the economy (except lower taxes
for the wrong people), the environment (except
to eliminate all environmental protections), etc.etc. So the Iraq war (picking the weakest of the axis of evil) was the meaans by which Bush
(the self-proclaimed “War President) was elevated
by the “Rove Concept” to Manhood. Unfortunately,
Bush is still a Wimp, albeit an evil one.
Submitted by Elliot L. Aronin

I appreciated the Post’s historical point of view, but it misses the major point of our current situation, namely party politics. The post-2006 situation cannot be seen simply as the flow of historical urges, with Congress ebbing and rising in response to some American Ideal. It is the opposition party alone that was able to being some checks to the gross incompetence of the Adminstration’s response to 9/11, to the discredit of the Republican Party.

It could have been a Democratic President and Congress that brought this debacle upon us, but it wasn’t (this time). Not being well-read in modern history, this article makes me want to go back and learn more about how party politics played in the issues of the 20s and 30s.

In this new, supposedly different ballgame day, there is little if any mention of the “old fashioned” concept of “balance of power.”

Before the dot.com buts, when just about everybody fancied himself to be an “expert” on the different kind of ballgame which poor old Warren Buffet, in his “old fashioned way” just didn’t understand.

After the tech bust literally millions of people came to realize Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway) had come out like a rose — while the dot.com experts and telecom new-gamers had lost their
arrogant arses.

When Mr. Bush and his handful of “experts” were handed the anger and cohesiveness of the U. S. citizens following 9-11, they seized the opportunity to show that they knew more than old fashioned military historians, experienced military strategists and balance-of-power thinkers… and they snatched the opportunity to show their stuff, and ran with it.

Just as with the tech bust in the stock market, a big splash of shock and awe was made, and then bit by bit the chips of consequences fell where they predicted by the ‘old fashioned’ guys.

When the next election came around, things weren’t looking too good, but the hot shots had an explanation for everything, saying that time would prove them right. We U. S. voters fell for it again. And GWB referred to our vote of confidence in the assurances he offered as “political capital.” But time did not prove them right. The political capital, as it were, got squandered like pouring good capital after bad, and instead of things getting better, they continued to worsen.

And it ain’t through yet.

What is needed in Washington now is some people who are aware of history and its lessons and HOW TO APPLY them, who understand military strategies that WORK, and who are capable of grasping how and why our going into Iraq the way we did caused a power vacuum there which — if we are damned if we DO walk away from it and damned if we DON’T.

The longer we stay, the more convinced become the vast majority of Middle Easterners and Islaamics that our motive is the same as all other outsiders who have come in… a desire to occupy and remain for empirical ends. Maintaining balance of power will continue to rely upon our presence, our loss of soldiers lives, and our enormous pouring of money as though down a rat hole. On the other hand, if we leave now, equilibrium will find a way, and it may not be friends of the U. S. who end up in control.

Did anybody see the historical significance of our going in when and as we did? Yes. Did anybody understand, before we went into Iraq, the historical factors that would shape how we would be perceived there, which interests would find the upset opportunistic for their ambitions there, what factions there have not cooperated with one another in absence of harsh and tyrannical rulers there…? Did anybody understand military strategies that did not work in Korea or Viet Nam, and would not work there? Yes. Did anybody understand that balance of power considerations can never be ignored, in any international power play, without dire consequences? Yes.

But, you see…, the problem was not that there were no qualified persons ready, willing and able to explain these things to the civilians in the White House…

The PROBLEM was, and is, that those who offered advice from such kinds of expertise were told to shut up or else…

Some shut up. Some got the or else (got fired, ir were forced into retirement, or wer scape goats.

Now the Congress is being blamed, the Democrats are being blamed, the press is being blamed…

Don’t you just love those old Laurel and Hardy sequences?

Did you ever think we would have a president who would look at the consequences of several years in which he had, and spent, political capital the way he wanted to, and when consequences would get
terrible would say to the Congress, “A fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”

I find Martin Braun’s an analogy a useful starting point. Put together with the observatiuons of Mimi he seems to be saying that Bush was more motivated by a need to prove his manhood than by a genuine effort to protect the nation. The aircraft carrier stunt is certainly proof of that.

As to the invokation of Hitler, the post by Martin Braun doesn’t actually compare Bush to Hitler. And it’s false to compare the two. Hitler was far more successful! He conquered Europe and but for the attack on Russia could have conquered Britain. He very nearlyu succeeded in murdering almost all the Jews of Europe and was largely supported by fellow Germans til the tide of the war turned. His popularity was high from 1933 to 1942-43. Furthermore, unlike Bush, Hitler was elected in a multi-party field by 44% of the vote, which was the largest plurality of any party since the Weimar Republic was declared in 1919.

Our visceral response that the comparison of Bush and Hitler is odious is, I think, part of the engineering of Rovian tactics, which label any dissent as “Bush hating” (I actually heard this from the lips of a federal judge in a Boston reading of Julius Caesar put on by the Federal Society. prior to that moment I imbued such people with wisdom. But the basic fallacy of an ad hominem argument which is designed to trivialize the debator, and hence trhe debate caused the scales to come off my eyes).

Currently, a more subtle form of Republican argument is that put forwArd by Brian: i.e. Democrats don’t have a better plan. It’s a subtler version of an ad hominem attack

Well, they’re not in tbhe executive so they’re not in a position to enact foreign policy. However, Joe Biden (not necessarily my favorite) put forward as partition plan that has been echoed by some Iraqis like Ali Allawi who suppoprted the invasion but is against the occupation. I suppose Rove’s friends would call that a flip-flop.

In any event can any defender of the Bush regime argue against the proposition that the US is weaker now than before 2003.

Ultimately, I am concerned with some of you that Americans have not participated as voters or dissenters sufficiently. There has been a betrayal. It’s been by the media as Bill Moyers has pointed out. The result could well be the neeed for a truly “strong” leader to solve the intractable problems created by Bush, esp. the long-run economic ones. For example, that massive debt we’ve incurred could lead to the runaway inflation Germany experienced after WW1. Then the Hitler analogy wouldn’t be so far fetched.

As to the media…I only watch the Daily Show, thank you. It’s the beszt analysis of current ev ents going.

We really do need to amend the Constitution to adopt the British parliamentary form of government whereby an incompetent leader can be removed forthwith, along with his cabinet level coterie, by a simple vote of “no confidence” rather than cumebrsome impeachment and be replaced real-time with an administration formed from the Legislative branch to serve at its further pleasure.

Because of our horribly flawed two-party system, this would not be a perfect solution to the kinds of problems we’ve been confronting for six years or so, but it would be a vast improvement.

Among other things, conforming with the mandate of the American people, Nancy Pelosi would now be residing in the White House rather than George Bush.

And, yes, it’s quite obvious George has been trying to work out his severe masculinity crisis at our nation’s expense. So why on earth would his party have nominated him in the first place? Surely some of his fellow Republicans must have known better.

#2 (Mimi) asks in closing, ” Are we such sheep that we cannot “see” except in hindsight?”
There are many sheep out there, and the ones that are not sheep do not always show up at the voting booth. But just who are those people listening to that make them sheep, and how did we get here in the first place? Let’s see… Xenophobic country singers with huge fan bases; Fox News; sound bites rather than actual study of abundantly available facts; Florida (2000); the Supreme Court (2000); Ohio (2004)… I am sure I can think of more reasons, but it is actually this: We have no one to blame but ourselves.

When people choose ignorance over knowledge, they are easy prey for any fear-mongering politician (or Karl Rove- like puppeteer). People like Rove love the ignorant- they would not be where they are without them. My wife hears two minutes of world news and turns in disgust. It is exactly this type of ignorance that keeps people from voting, from acting on their conscience, from being an involved citizen of their country.

We today seem to be in danger more due to the conservatives in this country who desire lock-step thought than any terrorist. We need involved vigilance over those we elect to safeguard our Constitution. That, and impeachment hearings.

I am not as fully informed about the political history or foreign policy of this country as I would like to be, but I don’t find much to disagree with in the postings to date. However, two factors puzzle me very much. First, how can we as nation be so convinced that our form of government, with serious flaws that stem largely from our unwillingness or inability to live up to our professed ideals, merit being sold to the rest of the world as a system that would be good for all mankind? Second, how in the world did a person as flawed as G. W. Bush appears to be, even come to be a serious choice for the presidency?

I have read much of the contemporary writing of the so-called pundits, critics, economists, historians, and others but have found no satisfactory answers to those two questions. I suspect that I am at best incredibly naive but perhaps some of the responders to the current posting would care to address these issues– maybe others are as confused as I am. I welcome the thoughts of others concerning these important issues.

I posted #2 above early this morning and have just read all the others, thinking what a wonderful place we are in to have a blog at the NY Times with such intelligent thoughtful people. Yes, my question “are we such sheep…” was actually rhetorical because I don’t think I am (a sheep) and I know my family and friends aren’t. So I was wondering who in America allowed “this” to happen – who voted for Bush in 2004? I can almost forgive some who may have voted for him in 2000, but not in 2004! Getting back to my fears. What I’m afraid of is that if this administration had NOT messed up so badly, we would not be so desperate to correct the imbalance. The real sheep are those in the Republican party who were the cowards who refused to stand up to our president and instead, backed down at every turn for one reason. They were running for office in 2002, 2004, and 2006. I think the main reason so many of us voted for Democrats in 2006 was not to see new laws passed, lower the deficit, or fix health care. We wanted one thing – a Congress that would not be such sycophants of the executive branch. We want subpoenas and hearings and we want to know what happened the past six years because we’ve been in a fog (not of our own doing) thanks to the prior Republican Congress. I know many, many people who voted for Bush in 2004 who woke up in time to vote Democrat in 2006. But I am not discouraged by American democracy because the good news is that Bush did mess up the war and the American people have voted in a Democratic Congress to figure out how it happened. We will know and maybe we will stop it from happening next time. We will try, I know that.

Interesting historical perspective. However, the true lesson of 9/11 is how easy it is to slip into fascism. In order to accept safety, we were willing to accept many inroads in our democratic institutions, including granting the President unprececented new powers, allowing our government to spy on us, acquiescing to torture, etc. History is rife with examples of other societies following this path so it is sad that we fell into the same trap. I hope this Congress helps us get out of it.

Our government is foundering here as well as in other parts of the world. No, we shouldn’t sell ourselves as good example– we’re not. The problem is compounded by the superficiality of our knowledge about other people, specifically in the first case about the culture and history of the tribal region described as “Iraq.” Seems like an educational, not military problem to me.

I know you’re looking for depth of philosophy, Mr. Dress, but maybe since we’re television-watching Americans, there aren’t any underlying reasons, just dingy factoids refusing to glitter although on the surface.

I laugh when the conservatives or closet conservatives call someone “over the top” which they do ten times a day. I’ve been called “over the top” in the pages of my own alumni magazine. That expression, like so much, is a big stupid cliche uttered by dolts.

Meanwhile, on the radio, our president is saying,
“The consequences of failure in Iraq would be dire.” Correct this schoolboy’s English.
“Are dire.”

I don’t know. It’s only a matter of which dolts one wants to excoriate more: the three or seven at the top or the 50 million plus who enabled their rise and reinforced them, thus becoming complicit in the murder of many more than a half-million human beings. Send both kinds of dolt back to school.

I was in an adult education class that only met in a hilltop high school during evening blizzards in the last year of the Vietnam war. One Thursday the town physician announced he would no longer be a hawk and was henceforth a dove. Transformation is always possible.

There are many reasons why we are imposing our system of government on others, the most important of which is that we think it will be to our advantage. Basically, we think that if a country like Iraq is stabilized with a capitalistic and democratic system like our own, everyone will become more interested in making money than in blowing up ethnic rivals and infidels: then we can trade with them and everyone will live happily ever after getting rich. We’ll get cheap oil, Arabs will stop picking on Israel, etc. Of course, that’s what the Bush administration thought; as far as I’m concerned, history has already proven them wrong. The problem is that Bush is an evangelical acolyte of Adam Smith, whose theories are good but inadequate when it comes to human nature. However, I wouldn’t blame Adam Smith – it was Bush and his neoconservative advisors who got this completely wrong.

The second question about how Bush got elected has been touched upon above. This has partly to do with the two-party system, partly to do with the erosion of the democratic process by special interest groups, but in my opinion mainly stems from the ignorance of the voting public. I think that the standards of public discourse have fallen to a dangerously low level, and we’re paying the price. The reasons for this are complex, but I think the start of a solution would be new leadership that is capable of conveying to the average American just how damaging it is to elect an inferior president. We wouldn’t be in this situation today if the public had been serious about their civic responsibilities and had informed themselves on their political candidates and issues before voting.

For Peter (as the for-me-just-now most current post-er here) as well as all preceding post-ers:

First off, my thanks to each post-er for this series of (“IMHO”) thoughtful, responsible, and well-reasoned posts. And thanks to TIMES Select for providing us this ?forum?.

Now, Peter — seeing I’ve only just now had the chance to read this article and the thus-far comments — you asked the question: “How in the world did a person as flawed as [GWB] apopoares to be, even come to be a serious choice for the presidency?”

For starters: As a longtime (expatriate North Easterner now living in what a family member refers to as “the Pacific Northwet”) NYT reader and ?”fan”?, on reading your post I was reminded of a long-ago NYT article “covering” (?) GWB’s as-reported ?”decision”? to become a serious candidate. The ?”spin”? in that article suggested to me quite strongly at the time that it was, I suppose you might say, W’s “handlers” who, in a sense, made that ?decision?

Said too much already to too little good effect, but it’s getting late at night and I had a rather exceptionally “hard day” today. So thanks everyone for your posts and thanks to NYT Select. I’ll be much looking forward to reading further posts here. [I do have a — er um — “few other opinions” too, need I add?] ? :-( :-)
marte

I join with others in thanking the NYT for this forum, and note that a small part of Dorell’s message (#23), “dangerously low level of public discourse” is disconfirmed by his, this, medium. The medium denies the message, so to speak. Thanks, NYT Select, for easing the deprivations of rustication in Canada’s Fraser Valley (BC).

Regarding Billings’ suggestion (#17) that the US should adopt British parliamentary government: As a third-generation Canadian who lived in California for most of her adult life and whose interest and involvement in government,international affairs, etc. stretches back >50 years in both the US and Canada, NO, NO, NO.

As the Fraser Institute (usually considered “right wing” it BC because it believes market forces exist and can accomplish some things better than governement)here recently described Canadian parliamentary democracy, it is a four-year dictatorship by one man. If there is a concern about loyal Bushies, just think of the loyalty demanded of back benchers in a parliamentary system. Besides parliamentary systems do not seem to understand either checks and balances or expert knowledge. The former are seldom explicitly considered or discussed, or built into the design of programs, and the system has few ways, other than commissions appointed by the reigning government, of canvassing, analyzing, or using expert knowledge. Investigations into matters tend to be done by former politicians or judges appointed by the current government. I read that the Gomery Inquiry here in Canada, an investigation of corruption and profiteering during the Liberal government’s fight against separatism,took longer and cost more than the US Congressional inquiry into 9/11.

And consider Tony Blair who took his country into war against the wishes of the electorate.

A they used to intone on Slattery’s People, American democracy may not work very well but it is probably the best we have–at least for those of us raised within a Western culture. (SP said it shorter.) Trying to export it is another matter, but then we could not have expected that W would understand the disruption and damage caused by Christian proselytizing in the tribal world. Perhaps someone could sneak The Poisonwood Bible on to his reading list.